working in prisons

[karenc at wi.rr.com]

Hi, Connie and interested others:

I've worked somewhat in prison-related situations, including visiting clients in prison, doing a training for psychologists and social workers in prison along with longtime work with the local shelter for abused women where many women were coming or going to jail or had been in jail.

Regarding psychodrama in prison, three areas to keep in mind:

Trauma is foremost. All of these women are trauma survivors on one level or another, and being incarcerated is a trauma in itself.

As trauma survivors, they have the usual defenses to deny and refuse the pain as well as survive the prison experience itself. Anger, dissociation, fantasy, as well as the typical drugs and alcohol and food. Some are significantly physically ill, with problems like diabetes, etc., and there is often not a good level of self care and often lots of codependency. Be sure to do alcohol/drug assessments, which you can do in action as well as paper. Action is more interesting. 

Pay attention to the social atom. They will run the gamut of relationships, from having burned all bridges to past relationships due to behavior, to having a significant relationship relating to their incarceration (boyfriend drug dealer, for example) and others. They may have their children taken away due to abuse, neglect, lack of ability to care for them as well as the incarceration situation itself which obviously separates them from their children..

Karen Carnabucci, MSS, LCSW, TEP
(262) 633-2645
karenc at wi.rr.com
 
Lake House Health & Learning Center
932 Lake Ave.
Racine, WI 53403
www.lakehousecenter.com